


Hollow

by mingyuan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 15:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mingyuan/pseuds/mingyuan
Summary: Remus Lupin, in the aftermath of Halloween 1981.





	Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here it is. I started this fic nearly four years ago, but I never finished it because I've never finished a story in my life because I don't understand how to write fiction. I was always more into poetry - hence this fic, which is written around T.S. Eliot's _The Hollow Men_.

V

_1 November 1981, 01:46_

It’s been nearly six hours since Remus Lupin arrived in London, but he hasn’t had a moment to get a grasp on his surroundings.

Just six hours ago, he was in the Black Forest with the pack of werewolves he’d been living with for the past three weeks, dirty and shivering and achingly alone. Wrapping his arms around himself, he thought longingly of having a warm home and a loving family to return to, like James and Lily and little Harry, at their little white house in Godric’s Hollow with its— 

He stopped, a cold wave of dread washing over him as he pictured the house clearly in his mind – the cramped kitchen, the cobblestone walkway leading up to the front door.

_Godric’s Hollow. The Fidelius._

“James and Lily live in Godric’s Hollow,” he said aloud. He leapt to his feet and disapparated.

\--- 

Now, standing in a small storage unit just off Diagon Alley, with only a sleeping baby and a snoring half-giant for company, he finally has time to gather his thoughts.

James and Lily are dead. Remus knows this, distantly, has heard it first-hand, but he is caught between the idea and the reality, the memory of their laughing faces more real to him than the ground he is standing on.

 _Sirius_ , he thinks, running a hand along the sleek black metal. He can feel Sirius’ magic humming around the edges of the motorcycle; his fingertips tingle with it. They’d woven the spells together, in the end, Sirius and James, and even, with a little prodding, Remus.

Six hours ago, he’d been sure Sirius was dead, that the Fidelius could never have been broken while he still breathed. But now…

 _Sirius is the traitor_ , says a voice in the back of his mind, and his hand stills, coming to rest on the silver headlight. Of course. Sirius is the traitor. Something surges up inside him, black and burning, then-- stops.

Remus stands stock still, somewhere between the emotion and the response. All he can register is a slight loss of breath, and the cold headlight leeching the warmth from his hand. The seconds slip by.

He is jolted from his reverie by a series of earsplitting explosions from outside, and his wand is already raised and ready by the time he realizes that it’s just fireworks; that the shouts he hears are not screams of fear and anguish, but the rousing cries of the drunk and joyful.

Harry wakes at the noise and begins wailing, and Remus scoops him up without thinking, rocks him restlessly as the celebration rages on around them. _To Harry Potter,_ the crowd shouts drunkenly, _The Boy Who Lived!_ The walls are thin, but Remus feels as though their voices are coming from miles away. The sounds press up against him, enclose him, but do not touch him.

Another firework goes off, right outside the door, _bang!_ — Harry clutches the fabric of Remus’ jumper in his tiny fists and whimpers softly. _This is the way the world ends_ , Remus thinks, pulling Harry tighter to his chest, _This is the way the world ends._

 

 I

_1 November 1981, 07:35_

Remus arrives seconds after the explosion, drawn to Sirius’ magic like a moth to flame, ready to be destroyed.

He takes in the chaos, the corpses, the rubble, and at the dead centre of it all, Sirius, fallen unsteadily to his knees. A deranged, sobbing laugh is coming from his mouth, parted lips that so many times have kissed Remus, have loved him, have lied to him. Limp at Sirius’ sides are the hands that have held him, healed him, the hands that caused this fraught and senseless chaos.

The dusty air crackles with magic, not all of it Sirius', and there's something familiar there, if Remus could only have a moment to _think_ , but Sirius is being shackled and hauled to his feet by two stone-faced aurors, and Remus stands paralyzed and the moment slips away and Sirius is gone.

 _No_ , he whispers, quiet and meaningless, carried away on the wind.

A film of dust is settling over the scene, and people are screaming, and the world is full of the thick scent of blood, but it all feels very far away. Over the commotion, Remus imagines he can hear a tiny skittering, like rats’ feet over broken glass.

 

IV

_1 November 1981, 02:33_

He is hesitant to leave Harry, but Hagrid can’t take him along to Surrey, and the ever-growing throngs of revelers in Diagon Alley are worrying at the already-unraveled edges of Remus’ nerves.

At half two, he apparates to Godric’s Hollow.

The first thing he notices is the darkness – the street lamps are lit and he can see the light from a few wands up ahead, but the sickly green glow that cast its pall over too many of his memories is absent.

An enormous crowd of wizards and muggles alike has gathered around the small house – one or two hundred, Remus estimates – but they haven’t been allowed past the Potters’ fence. He pushes silently to the front of the throng and finds a perimeter of Aurors guarding the boundary like sentinel ravens protecting their murder.

Unheedful, he slips past. No one tries to stop him.

The building is half-destroyed, with the roof all but gone and only one wall left standing. He picks his way through the wreck, broken glass and rubble tinkling underfoot, and tries not to think of the last time he was here, just before Harry’s first birthday when Sirius had given him that plastic broom when he could _barely walk_ , _Sirius, for Merlin’s sake_.

James and Lily’s bodies have not been taken away. They are lying on the dark grass just beyond the wreckage, side by side in a mockery of sleep. There is no blood.

Remus recalls, with perfect clarity, the last time he saw Lily, working remote surveillance at Order headquarters, back when she was still allowed out of the house. Her hair had been tied back, loose strands falling in her face, and her eyes had been bright and hunted, but she had still smiled at Remus, touched his arm and asked him gently how he’d been, how Sirius was, if she could do anything.

Spurred on by some perverse curiosity, he brushes Lily’s eyelids open. Her green eyes stare sightlessly up at the stars, reflecting the sky like the glass-dark surface of the Black Lake.

Stare is the wrong word, he thinks. Her eyes are not here, Lily is not here – this cold, sightless body, this empty body, this is not her. And James… he can’t look at James.

He stays there for hours, crouched beside these cold bodies that once contained the people he loved, now hollow and barren, blind and insensate. He stays even as the stars die with the rising sun, not knowing what to do with himself, not remembering how to move.

When he leaves, it is just past dawn. The sky is pale and empty.

 

II

_4 November 1981, 23:48_

It is three days before Remus sleeps at night. Between Aurors tearing his flat apart, the frantic and increasingly hopeless search for any of the larger bits of Peter, meetings with Dumbledore, last-ditch attacks from the scattered remaining Death Eaters, the image of Sirius laughing that’s burned itself into the back of his eyelids, and the horrible, aching emptiness, he hasn’t found it easy to rest.

After three days of rifling through Sirius' things, interrogating Remus about seemingly random odds and ends, and hexing anything that moved, the Aurors have finally decided there’s nothing more to destroy in Sirius’ old flat and left Remus alone. He collapses into the stripped-bare bed and the exhaustion of the last few days – of the last two years, really – rushes dark into his head, and claims him. 

\---

He dreams of their final meeting, the night before Sirius left him. They are standing in their bedroom in Sirius’ flat, illuminated only by the dim twilight. He remembers how deeply, burningly he wanted to touch Sirius, and how he couldn’t bear to do it. Sirius was silent, and Remus didn’t break it.

They shed their clothes in silence and lay in their bed, backs to one another. In the dream, Remus knows that when he wakes in the morning, Sirius will be gone, locked away on a cold grey rock in the North Sea. But he is already too far away to touch. Remus lies there with his eyes open. It is a long time before sleep claims him.

When he opens his eyes, the room is gone, and he is lying in a clearing in the Forbidden Forest, the full moon bathing him in silver light.

 _It wasn't me_ , says the moon, in Sirius’ voice. _You know I wouldn't do that, Moony. You know me._

 _Do I?_ he tries to say, but no sound comes out. The moon laughs at him, hollow and manic as the space behind his ribs, and winks out.

The darkness doesn’t lift but he is back in Godric’s Hollow, the Potters’ house a splintered shell around him. The crowds and the Aurors have gone. Lily and James are on the ground where he left them, their bright eyes rotted out of their heads, and Harry is screaming, and Sirius is wearing Wormtail’s skin around him like a cloak.

The scene blurs out again, or he loses track of it, and the next time he knows what’s happening he’s somewhere much more familiar.

Curses are flying, red and gold and purple, and Remus realizes his wand is dead in his hand even as he scrambles to find a better position to retaliate from.

A hex grazes his left shoulder and his entire arm seizes up, leaving him to cast his wandless shield charm one-handed. But as he raises his right hand, he feels nothing, not even the feeblest spark of the magic that is usually a roaring current within him.

With panic building inside of him, he dives behind a building just as the air explodes around him in a haze of green light. He flattens himself against the wall and takes a few shaky breaths, then chances a look around the corner of the building to sight his attacker.

It's Sirius, his wand raised and his face twisted with malice. The edges of the dream feel sharp somehow, as if Sirius is the midday sun, throwing black shadows into corners.

 _Moony,_ Sirius calls, in a voice that speaks of mischief to come, _I know you’re there! Won't you come out?_ And Remus, not in control of his own body, steps out into the open.

 _There you are!_ Sirius crows in delight, and his eyes are so wild and disarming that Remus has to look away.

 _Never take your eyes off your opponent_ , snarls Mad-Eye's voice, and Sirius cackles, high and cold, as the world turns acid green.

\---

Remus wakes with a start, crosses the room, and flings the window wide. He leans out into the open air, and for a few long moments, he breathes, willing his heart to slow, his hands to stop shaking. Another breath. Another day. The earliest risers are beginning to trickle onto the street below, and Sirius is fading from the autumn sky.

Remus stands there for a long moment, before pushing away from the window and walking to the tiny kitchen, where he puts the kettle on to boil with steady hands. He stands in front of the hob as it hisses, sputters, and finally screams.

He curls his hands around a chipped mug and inhales the steam, willing his nightmares away.

 

III

_13 November 1981, 06:12_

He is outside Sirius’ cell in Azkaban, watching him unseen through heavy iron bars. The cell is closed with cold grey stone on every side, and Sirius is huddled in a corner, carving a crescent moon into the floor with his nails.

“Sirius,” Remus breathes, and it is a prayer.

Sirius looks up, finally, and his eyes are empty, gaping pits that swallow Remus whole, the blackness spreading tendrils outwards to pull him in even as he tries, madly, to kiss Sirius. The stone walls of the cell crumble into the darkness, but the iron bars remain.

\---

Remus wakes alone on the floor of the Shack, trembling, raw. The sun has not quite risen, and the world is awash in grey light.

His stomach heaves as he gropes blindly for something to cover his body. His fingers close around what feels like fabric and he yanks it off the bed, hard. The motion aggravates a wound on his ribcage, which starts bleeding freely, but he is too exhausted to care. He has barely pulled the thin, moth-eaten blanket over his torso before he is unconscious again.

\---

When he wakes again the room is brighter, sunlight forcing its way through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. There is a warm glow to the room, so different from the cold moonlight of the night before, and Remus always loved waking after the full to the warm weight of Sirius beside him, his skin stained golden with morning light. He feels his absence now as an ache behind his ribs, all mixed up with hurt and anger and the gnawing hunger of mornings after. 

In sixth year, after everything went to hell, he realized he would never stop being in love with Sirius, no matter how much he hurt him, no matter what horrible, thoughtless things he did. And even now, in the dead silence of his friends’ absence, he hasn’t stopped, can’t stop. Loving Sirius is just another cross to bear, like these scars carved into his body, like the lives he's taken, like the lives he couldn't save. Like the wolf.

He lies there in the morning quiet, breathing in the empty Shack as he waits for his wounds to scab over and his limbs to cooperate. Absentmindedly, he traces a set of claw marks on the floor. His nails echo over the hollow floorboards.

After ten minutes – or maybe an hour, or maybe a lifetime, he feels strong enough to stand again. Slow, unsteady, but alive, he pushes himself to his feet.


End file.
